You see lightning strike a mountaintop, and 3.24 s later you hear the accompanying thunder. How far away is th

You see lightning strike a mountaintop, and 3.24 s later you hear the accompanying thunder. How far away is the mountaintop? The speed of sound is 340 m/s, and the speed of light is 3.00x10^8 m/s.

Its simple, distance is speed * time

here u will consider speed of sound because u r hearing sound after 3.24 sec.so this time is associated with sound

distance=340*3.24
=1101.6 metres

The time it takes light or sound to reach you is (time) = (distance) / (speed).

Call the distance to the mountaintop x.
Light takes x/(3.00x10^8) seconds to reach you. Sound takes x/(340) seconds to reach you. The difference in times is:
3.24 = x/(340) - x/(3.00x10^8)

x = 3.24 / (1/340 - 1/3E8)
x = 1100 m



Note that the time taken by light (3 microseconds) is much less than the precision in your ability to measure time. An assumption that you see the lightning strike immediately as it occurs would give you a result of 1101.6 exactly instead of 1101.60124848. With any less than seven significant figures in your measurements, this difference is negligible.

It took the light 3.24 sec./3x10^8 m/s = 1.08 x 10^-8 seconds for the light of the lightning strike to reach you. That would matter in some circumstances. Here, it lacks significance.
The sound traveled for 3.24s. Each second it travelled 340m. 3.24 x 340 = 1101.6 m.

Ignore the speed of light. The speed of sound is not a significant fraction of the speed of light so it does not affect the answer


D = 340 m/s * 3.24 s

To get the distance: you would multiply the time it takes by the speed of sound :

(3.24s) * (340 m/s) = 1101.6 m